


The Source and the Sound

by Kithara17



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Illnesses, Implied Violence, Mental Anguish, Mind Control, Minor Character Death, Myla dies I'm so sorry, Stuttering, ego death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29503062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kithara17/pseuds/Kithara17
Summary: Myla always loved songs. There was a time, once, when she knew several of them: The ants go marching and There within the Knotted Grove, My bones are brittle, Seek truth in darkness, and Cease all your wandering. When Myla first heard the hum, she was upset, because soon after she started to forget these songs, as though this new sound would not suffer any others to occupy her thoughts.
Kudos: 20





	The Source and the Sound

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first ever fanfic (at least in prose)! "Canon compliant" is still my comfort zone, unfortunately for Myla. I wanted to explore her heartbreaking loss of self from her own perspective. Above all, I was focused on the infection's attack on the senses as it takes hold.
> 
> Anything in "double quotes" is dialogue from the game, not my own writing.

A pink, purple glow. The smell of dirt, metal. A taste in the air of something sweet. Several sounds, sorted by decibels, descending:  
1\. The whirring of machines, belts hugging tight to gears, some big, others small, all spinning.  
2\. The rhythmic _plink, plink, plink,_ of a pick hitting stone, _plink, plink,_ (here, there is a pause as the laborer takes a breath, before…) _plink, plink, plink_  
3\. Someone singing, under a stone ceiling. She buries her subjects in song even as her arms swing to unearth a second, still quieter song.  
4\. A hum.

“Ohhh, bury my mother,”  
_plink_  
“pale and slight.”  
_plink_  
“Bury my father,”  
_plink_  
“with his eyes shut tight”  
_plink_  
“Bury my sisters,”  
_plink_  
“two by two”  
_plink_  
“And then when you’re done,”  
_plink_  
“let’s bury me tooooo!”

The last _plink_ never comes, as Myla holds the last note for several beats. She’s not supposed to, at least, that’s not how the song goes, but she doesn’t remember that. Nor does she need to; the fermata serves its purpose, providing her a chance to rest her arms. After a few breaths, she resumes.

As easy as breathing: inhume, exhume.

Suddenly, a fifth sound: a small thing falling down the shaft to the floor behind her. In volume, it places between sounds #3 and #4. Myla turns to face it. She sees a ghost, and laughs, and asks if they know that song, the one she was singing? It is her favourite song. (She does not know any other songs anymore.)

As she speaks, her voice chokes for a moment, the way the whirring chokes when a gear catches for an instant. Speaking is harder than singing. Since nobody has ordained the words and the rhythm and the pitch, she has to decide them for herself as she goes. She enjoys the challenge.

The ghost does not respond. They angle their saucer eyes first at the pick and then at Myla, miming curiosity, though they are not curious. They do not see what they were looking for in Myla’s own eyes, and exchange their heavy silence for a lighter one, which invites Myla to speak again.

“We can sing something else if you like. You start singing and I'll join in. I bet you have a b-b-beautiful singing voice! Ha ha ha!”

Myla’s laughter is nervous, but not at the ghost standing before her. She is nervous because she is beginning to forget the next verse. She starts to sing again, trying to grasp the fleeting words before they slip away into the cracks worn by her _plink plink plink_ ing, chasing the same sound she is.

“Ohhh, bury the knight with her broken nail,  
bury the... p-priest... something about a crown...?  
I c-can't remember the rest of that one, ha ha ha! Maybe I'll just hum it.”

She does, and the ghost leaves as suddenly as they arrived, apparently not finding what they were looking for. Myla returns to her work.

Time passes. Or does it? It must. The hole appears dug no deeper, but the glow is a little brighter, the smell of chitin a little sweeter, and a little bit louder, imperceptibly louder, is the hum.

\-----

Myla always loved songs. There was a time, once, when she knew several of them: _The ants go marching_ and _There within the Knotted Grove, My bones are brittle, Seek truth in darkness,_ and _Cease all your wandering._ When Myla first heard the hum, she was upset, because soon after she started to forget these songs, as though this new sound would not suffer any others to occupy her thoughts.

\-----

The routine is comforting. The punctual _plink_ reminds her she is alive; if she weren’t, how could she swing the pick? The song reassures her that time is moving forward; if it weren’t, how could she progress from one verse to the next? Inhume, exhume.

When the fifth sound returns, a lifetime has passed in this manner. Whose lifetime? Myla doesn’t know. She pauses her song and dance to address the ghost.

“Oh, hello again! Are you still running about? Why not join me d-down here? There's plenty of wealth in these rocks for anyone willing to put a bit of work in!”

The ghost looks at her with eyes like inkwells, and then at the rocks behind her, like they are asking a question.

“Those crystals out there are worth a fair b-b-bit,” her voice catches again but she swallows down her choke, “but I have a feeling that there's something even more valuable hidden just a bit deeper in! I can almost smell it! Ha ha ha!” 

Myla is almost correct. She _can smell it,_ overwhelmingly sweet; she can also hear it.

She has gotten considerably better at stringing together sentences, and she thinks perhaps it isn’t so different from singing after all. The words keep coming up through her throat and into the cloying air.

“You're welcome to join me, there's enough for both of us! Or if you don't feel like d-d-d-digging,” like a recoil starter spinning too slow, “you can just sit and sing with me! Ha ha ha!”

The ghost nods a bit, as if they are happy at the thought, but they are not happy. They draw their nail, step up to Myla’s side, and strike, _plink,_ right next to where she has struck so many, many times. They pause, as if to inhale, but they do not inhale. They strike again, _plink._

As the ghost’s strikes fall into a rhythm, she joins them in mining and begins to sing.

“Ohh, bury the knight,”  
_plink_  
“with her broken nail,”  
_plink_  
“Bury the lady,”  
_plink_  
“lovely and pale!”  
_plink_  
“Bury the priest,”  
_plink_  
“in his tattered gown,”  
_plink_  
“Then bury the beggar,”  
_plink_  
“with his shining croooown!”  
_plink_  


Myla stops. “Ha ha ha! Are you suh... ” a longer pause as she frantically reels in the word before it can dart away, “surprised? I remembered the second verse! Lots of time to think while I work down here. Maybe I can even c-come up with some songs of my own!” 

She would like to, very much, although she isn’t sure she is capable. The ghost nods at her, and she thinks they look encouraging. Then they look back at the mine shaft, and back at Myla, not quite meeting her eyes this time. She thinks they look sad to go, but promises to come back.

“This is hard work, but I don't mind. Down here, I can k-keep working without even sleeping. It's fun! And every once in a while you c-c-come to visit me! I'm glad... ha ha... I'm glad you like the sound of my voice!” Myla is correct. The ghost does like the sound of her voice, to the extent that an empty shell of void and soul can like something. Nevertheless, ghosts are very busy, and they leave the way they came.

If Myla notices that the hole has been dug deeper in these short moments than it has in an eternity of her own mining, she doesn’t show it. But she does notice the hum. No, it’s a little clearer and she can tell now, it isn’t a hum, it’s a whispered song. Myla thinks she must be getting closer.

“Keep singing so I can find you!

“I can almost hear what you're saying!”

\-----

At first Myla ignored the hum, or tried to. But when she noticed her songs slipping away, she grew uncharacteristically angry. First, she tried to leave, to go somewhere the sound did not reach, but it seemed to follow her. Next, she tried to drown it out, settling near the noisy machines in Crystal Peak, but it was still there beneath the rattle and whir. Before she thought to remove her hearing organs, she had a better idea.

With a pickaxe in her hand and a song in her mouth, she determined she would find whatever was humming and put an end to it. At the time, she knew a song, since forgotten, that went like that: _To stop the sound, you stop the source._

\-----

Several lifetimes pass. Maybe even many. Or does time pass at all? It must have, for something has changed.

Now Myla hears the song clearly, louder even than the creaking machinery up above. The words are clear, although it is a language she has never heard before. Nevertheless, her brain translates: “DANGEROUS.”

The pink, purple glow is still there, but it is harder to see. It is behind another, brighter glow, lambent, orange, more radiant. The voice whispers a word that she knows means “LIGHT.”

When the fifth sound returns, it is now the quietest of them all, and Myla doesn’t notice. She continues to sing, and to swing her axe. Exhume, inhume.

_plink_  
“...Bury my body…”  
_plink_  
“c-cover my shell...”

She rifles for the next line, and right as she’s about to grab it, the song from below comes in loud and clear “KILL THE EMPTY ONE.” If Myla understands this phrase, she doesn’t act on it. But she has forgotten the rest of the verse and florid frustration fills her head. 

“How much longer must I dig?” is what she thinks, but she doesn’t say it. Instead, she keeps singing “...Bury... body... cover... shell…” each word punctuated with a _plink._

The ghost, still unnoticed behind her, has the same expression they have always had, but this time the expression means “worry.” They turn and leave.

\-----

...or is it the other way around? _To stop the source, you stop the sound._ Myla couldn’t remember anymore. Why did she come here? Why was she digging? She did not know the answers, nor did she even know to ask the questions. 

There was a part of her that wanted to stop the hum. That part was not involved in the swinging of her arms.

\-----

Time surely has passed. However much time it takes for one to move from a state of singing into the absence of song, at the very least, that much time has elapsed. Myla is no longer singing, though her dance continues, to no effect. She _plink, plink, plink_ s but the hole does not get any deeper. Exhume. Exhume. Exhume.

In her eyes, blinding orange, radiant. The new song, “DANGEROUS. LIGHT. KILL THE EMPTY ONE,” blares in her ears and she does her best not to listen.

This time the fifth sound lands like a siren behind her. The _plink_ ing stops immediately, and she pivots to face the ghost, not of her own volition but by the will of something that was here long before the dig began.

The ghost looks into her orange eyes. They find, at last, what they were looking for, and they are very, very sad. They draw their nail.

In Myla’s dreams, she is still singing.

“...Bury my mother… Pale and slight...  
Bury… My sisters… Two by two…”

**Author's Note:**

> The title, as well as the work itself, is inspired by Laura Stevenson's song by the same name. There are also a couple references to other songs of hers, kudos if you find them :)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
